


Make It Home Tonight

by ScarTissue



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, OC centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 13:15:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2548790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarTissue/pseuds/ScarTissue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, he begins instead, quietly to himself so he won’t forget, won’t ever forget what he did, there was a woman named Catherine.</p>
<p>The price of penance is a high, high, high road to climb.</p>
<p>(Preview of something I'm working on for NaWriNoMo)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make It Home Tonight

Not many know the true story, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

 

 

  
_Even he doesn’t remember_ , the shade thinks from his perch.   _And he and I are all left who even could know of it._  


Below him sits, or rather slouches haphazardly, a boy of maybe fourteen, just after a short growth spurt.  The forest lets in soft, strained light from the cloudy sky above, casting a shadow across his face in bars and spots. Face sleep slackened and hair mussed from the wind, even its snowy coloring couldn’t betray his true age. Nothing is moving here, no animals foraging or people hiking. Shade tends to scare them off. Not even his own chest rises for breathing, shoulders hunched and frozen for hours as he watches the boy, willing him to look up, to see, to remember, to just know.

 

If he looks closely enough, (he looks too closely, in all honesty) Jack’s chest isn’t moving either. 

 

  
_Please_ , he sends upward, not for the first time, to anyone who can hear,  _who will, please don’t let him ever know._  


 

He scared that off too.

 

(There’s a darker side to every myth.)

 

 

 

 

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

 

 

 

 

  
_Once upon a time_ , a mother begins, children rapt in her lap, _there was a boy named Jack Frost-_  


 

Shade wants to scream every time he hears this story. He grips his scythe so hard his knuckles pop at the start of it, and imagines cutting the woman’s mouth open from ear to ear, dragging ever false word out of her so it might drain into the earth with her blood, until there wasn’t  a drop of them left. The ones all the people knew, the happy hero who fell for thin ice, _the biggest pack of lies that ever came falling off a tongue, there had been no Jack, no boy, **there had been no thin ice**_ -

 

 

Once upon a time, he begins instead, quietly to himself so he won’t forget, won’t ever forget what he did, there was a woman named Catherine.

 

 

 

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

 

 

 

 

"Please", she asked, not begged, "Please."

 

 

Not begged. _Not yet_ , he thought with a smirk. Shade liked to play with his charges, before they crossed through the veil. He might as well, anyway. There weren’t many left now…

 

 

Shade tutted down at her, dragging his scythe across the brown wool of her dress. It was course, the same color as her hair, shorn short. (Catherine, he gathers from the brush against her skin. Catherine Overland).  _Only the poor die this young_.

 

 

He carefully, almost lovingly skated the tip of the silver blade on her twisted ankle, tender as a lover’s hand. It was swollen red and angry, caught in between rock and ice in the most remote path this backwoods town had. There was no way she’d make it home before nightfall.

 

 

He said as much.

 

 

"And with all this snow coming in…"  Shade drew he tip of his blade up to her chin, pale and pointed, and lifted her face so he could see her eyes. There were no tears welling in them, but they shone fiercely, the color of tree sap caught in the sun. He suddenly noticed the jut to her chin.

 

 

"You can’t take me today," she said firmly. Like that settled the matter. "I’ve got children to feed. Five of them, oldest fifteen and unmarried."

 

Shade scoffed, and pressed his scythe further into her throat, scratching the hollow. “It doesn’t work that wa-“

 

"You can’t take me," she interrupted, "because it’s All Hallows eve."

 

 

His eyes went very wide, and almost dropped his blade.  _How could he have forgotten_ -

 

Meanwhile Catherine’s smile had grown to both her ears, teeth stark white against her pallor. “My mother’s spirit is walking the earth tonight,” she warned delightedly, “she’ll drag you back to hell if I die and leave my children alone, like she did to me.”

 

Shade seized up. _How dare she- he was her reaper. There was no saying no to him, no loopholes! And she was so close to the end of his charges- he wouldn’t tolerate this disrespect, not from some willful bitch with five mouths to feed before she-_  


 

 

_Wait._

 

"Five children and a vengeful ghost?" Shade held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. He backed up until he was off the path, the snow around his feet cracking under spectral weight.

"I wouldn’t want to mess with that, would I?"

 

 

Catherine smiled again, so lost in her triumph she couldn’t see behind his eyes. 

 

 

Shade smirked as he turned and left, waiting quietly behind the tree line as Catherine hobbled home. Home to five young mouths with hopes and dreams and full of life’s promise.

 

 

  
_Five mouths to feed_ , he thought, fingering the staff of his scythe,  _Five mouths indeed._  


**Author's Note:**

> This is a preview for a story I've been rolling around in my head for a while, but I think I'm going to kick start my writing in november. Nawrinomo is gonna kick my ass


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